Swords are the weapon of choice in a training session in front of the temple. These are only used by senior, more experienced nuns. Here, Jigme Rupa (left) and Jigme Karuna wield their swords outside the temple. The Drukpa nuns say they champion ‘gender equality, physical fitness, environmentally friendly living and respect for all living beings.’
The fact that Kier Starmer has on track to get fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn is both infuriating and hilarious to me (in a laugh so I don’t cry kind of way).
That Starmer is being held up as the great, dynamic politician who “saved” Labour through centrist politics and catering to the right while Corbyn was derided as a kook who cost Labour elections for a generation really gets my goat.
Starmer just happened to be standing by as Reform and the Conservatives stab each other to death while Corbyn was dealing with a Reform Brexit party which didn’t run against Conservatives and the right and far-right were merged to one.
36% of the vote isn’t as impressive and doesn’t fit the “historic landslide” narrative.
Since the end of WWII, the United States has been committed to the military, political, and economic integration of countries in Europe and Japan into a bloc that it controls. Through the NATO+ structure, the US ensured complete military dominance within the imperialist group, deploying many military bases in countries defeated in WWII, including in Japan (120), Germany (119), and Italy (45). The latter is home to over 12,000 US military personnel.
After WWII, Japan, as a frontline state against Soviet and Chinese communism, was allowed to rapidly develop its economy. However, in the 1980s, Japan’s economic rise began to pose a possible threat to the United States’ global economic hegemony, leading to increased bilateral trade frictions. The United States forced a rapid appreciation of the Japanese yen through the 1985 ‘Plaza Accord’, reducing exports and causing Japan to lose its economic momentum. Then, following the 1987 Wall Street crash, the US compelled Japan to adopt ultra-loose monetary and economic policies. This aimed to increase the flow of capital to the US to aid finance its international aggression against the USSR. In the process, it created the ‘bubble economy’ in Japan, the bursting of which plunged Japan into a decades-long economic stagnation.
In the fields of information technology and new energy, among other high-tech areas, Japan also faced suppression from the United States, hindering its industrial upgrading. Toshiba was the global leader in semiconductor manufacturing by 1987 until it was sanctioned by the US under the pretext of making deals with the USSR (very similar to what the United States has done with Huawei in China). Toshiba’s main competitors, IBM and Intel, benefited from this policy by the US state. […]
Japan’s governments have pursued policies of political provocation to China, at the behest of the US, despite the great advantages to Japan’s economy that would flow from closer ties with China.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and Germany’s subsequent reunification, the German bourgeoisie coveted Russia’s markets and low-cost energy. They desired economic ties with Russia but only as long as they and their French compatriots could maintain their unfettered domination of the European project, which they had held since WWII. This meant building economic ties with Russia but excluding Russia’s political leadership from any equal participation in Europe’s political affairs, decisions, or structures. US strategy in turn had been to avoid any strategic relationship between Russia and Germany as their combined strength would create a formidable economic competitor in Europe. […]
Over the last few months of 2023, political representatives of German capital in the Bundestag privately raised and then introduced measures to restrict trade with China under the guise of de-risking. This is clearly in contradiction to the short- and medium-term interests of German business. […] Today, the short-term interests of executives at nominally German companies are subordinated to the interests of Hyper-Imperialism. […]
After reunification in 1990, Germany pursued a dual strategy: first, it decisively supported the US strategy towards Russia of NATO expansion. Second, it led a simultaneous strategy of ‘capital penetration’ into Russia with the aim of securing political control in that state of groups most tied to Western and German interests and against those pursuing a more independent policy. German capital supported proxies like Russian billionaire (at the time) Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In 2001, Khodorkovsky established the Open Russia Foundation, with Henry Kissinger as one of its trustees. By 2004, he was imprisoned for fraud and embezzlement after attempting to carry out policies against Putin.
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel pursued dual strategies of supporting military preparations against Russia and organising the internal opposition to Putin. She also orchestrated the building of Nord Stream 2 despite huge US resistance. The latter however was for German self-interest, not for the appeasement of Russia, nor to hinder NATO expansion. In 2014, she arranged the release of Khodorkovsky and enabled a calculated breach of the Minsk agreements. But the dual strategy ended in February 2022, when Germany as a willing partner alongside the US, and with the help of Ukraine, decided to wrestle and topple Russia.
Germany’s reality, however, is that unless it were prepared to undertake a full break with US policy, which no significant section of the German bourgeoisie is prepared to consider, any strategy it has fails without US support – giving the US the whip hand in this relationship. […]
The US will continue to deprive the German bourgeoisie of all major options for asserting independent political positions. With the help of the capital ownership links that we have described, the German bourgeoisie will be faced with absolute subsumption of the options for the action of German capital under the US aegis. The hostility towards Russia acts as a driver of Europe’s subordination to the US and as a loss of any possibility of independent development.
An intimate documentary about four generations of women (great-grandmother Um Ali, grandmother Nemat, mother Hiam Abbass, and director Lina Soualem, Hiam Abbass’s daughter) and their shared legacy of exile.
